Romney’s remarks a day earlier to the Des Moines Register’s editorial board played into his efforts to moderate his positions as the Nov. 6 election approaches.

“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” Romney told the newspaper yesterday before an event in the swing state of Iowa.

Romney didn’t specify what he would do if a Republican-controlled Congress passed abortion legislation and sent it to him to sign into law. His running mate, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, sponsored a bill during the last Congress that would deem a fetus a person and effectively criminalize abortion without exceptions, including for rape victims.

Winning women

President Barack Obama’s campaign and abortion-rights advocates jumped on Romney’s remark, accusing him of trying to hide his previous stance on the contentious issue in an attempt to win over women, a crucial constituency for both candidates.

While Romney’s comments to the editorial board had the potential to widen his appeal among independent female voters, they also risked raising questions among other independents about where he stands on the issue and depressing turnout among anti-abortion Republicans who already had misgivings about his past positions.

The Romney campaign reached out to Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, making clear the former Massachusetts governor wasn’t shifting his positions on abortion, council spokesman J.P. Duffy told Bloomberg News. The website Talking Points Memo quoted Perkins as saying there were “no alarm bells” about Romney from his perspective.

Plea for votes

The potential confusion raised by Romney’s abortion remarks came as he attempts to accelerate his campaign’s momentum coming out of his first debate with Obama.

“I need your vote,” Romney said today at a town hall rally in Mount Vernon, Ohio. “Because if you vote for me and you get some people to do the same thing, Ohio is going to elect me the next president of the United States.”

The state, which has 18 electoral votes, has backed the winner in the past 12 presidential elections.

Gallup polling suggests a settling of the bounce for Romney following his performance in the Oct. 3 debate.

The daily tracking survey of likely voters taken Oct. 3-9, starting with the day of the debate, shows the race tied at 48 per cent support for each candidate. Romney led, by 49 per cent to 47 per cent, in Gallup’s first survey of likely voters released yesterday.

Its survey of registered voters today reports Obama ahead, by 50 percent to 45 percent, up from 49 per cent to 46 per cent a day earlier.

The margin of error for each sample group is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Romney clarification

Romney’s campaign sought to clarify his position on abortion soon after his remarks to the Des Moines Register were posted online last night.

“Mitt Romney is proudly pro-life, and he will be a pro-life president,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

Socially conservative Republicans made limiting abortion rights part of the party’s platform, which proposes a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure.

Ryan also co-sponsored an act trying to narrow the definition of rape to curtail abortions. Only in cases of “forcible rape,” according to the measure, would a woman be eligible to have her abortion covered under insurance.

“I’m as pro-life as a person gets,” Ryan told the Weekly Standard magazine in 2010.

‘Full confidence’

Republicans stood by Romney today, saying they still believed the candidate would advocate for policies limiting abortion rights.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the anti-abortion advocacy group Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement that she has “full confidence that as president, Governor Romney will stand by the pro-life commitments he laid out,” to prohibit federal funding for Planned Parenthood and “advocate for a bill to protect unborn children capable of feeling pain.”

Akin, who made national headlines in August for saying a rape exception to a ban on abortion was unnecessary because “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy, was confident that Romney “would govern as a pro-life president,” Tyler said. Akin is running against Democrat Claire McCaskill.

The Obama campaign said Romney was being misleading, a message the president and his surrogates have been hammering on since the Oct. 3 debate in Denver. They pointed to a remark the Republican made during a 2007 debate when he said he would be “delighted” to sign a bill banning all abortions.

‘Can’t trust him’

“Romney may try to change his image four weeks before Election Day, but he can’t change the fact that women can’t trust him,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement.

Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List, which raises money for female candidates who support abortion rights, said in a statement that Romney “is weaving back and forth between versions of himself faster than his spokeswoman can keep up.”

While seeking the Republican nomination, Romney regularly promised to limit abortion funding.
In September, he said he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to abortion.

Romney’s ‘preference’

“It would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue,” he said at the time on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Even so, Romney’s reliability on the matter was such a concern among some anti-abortion activists that more than 150 pastors and abortion opponents met in Texas during the race for the Republican presidential nomination early this year to determine which candidate to support against Romney.

Backers of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senator Rick Santorum made pitches. The group endorsed Santorum, citing a need to rally around one Romney rival.

After Romney claimed the nomination three months later, he turned his attention almost exclusively to the economy and jobs, rarely mentioning social issues.

In Mount Vernon today, Romney cast himself as more eager to use economic and diplomatic pressure than military action to influence events in the Middle East, tempering the muscular foreign policy tone he’s taken in past appearances.

Syria participation

“We should play an active role,” he said. “That doesn’t mean sending in troops or dropping bombs but it does mean actively participating in a place like Syria.”

That approach, he said, doesn’t conflict with his promises to increase military spending.

“I want a military that’s so strong that we don’t have to use it,” he said.

A Bloomberg News Swing Voter poll in Ohio and Virginia showed Romney has an opening to win among married mothers, who are disproportionately concerned about unemployment and consider the Republican best at creating jobs, handling gasoline prices and reviving the housing market.

That demographic group comprised one in six voters and narrowly backed Obama in 2008. In the poll conducted Oct. 4-7, they supported Romney over Obama 50 per cent to 44 per cent in Ohio and 50 percent to 45 per cent in Virginia.

The margin of error for the telephone survey of 377 female likely voters in Ohio who are married with children aged 18 and younger was plus or minus 5.1 percentage points. The margin of error for the poll of 400 voters with the same profile in Virginia was plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.